How Much Denver's Poor and Rich Will Lose or Gain Under New Health Care Plan

This week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 24 million people would lose their insurance by 2026 under a new House health-care plan intended to replace Obamacare. That number would likely include many poor people and seniors in Denver, whose tax credits would be significantly smaller according to figures collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The KFF numbers also show that plenty of Denverites who are better off would see their tax credits rise, sometimes from zero into the thousands — and that trend can be seen across all three major age categories analyzed by the foundation.

This data is accessible via a Kaiser Family Foundation interactive map that allows visitors to look up plan-related tax credits for every county in the nation. Estimates are offered for individuals who are 27, forty and sixty, and who make between $20,000 and $100,000 per year.

Related Stories

Unfortunately, the map can be difficult to navigate, particularly for folks wanting to look up dollars and cents related to Denver County, which appears as a tiny speck even when magnified. To make it easier for you, we've pulled all the Denver-specific info, and it shows that the people with the lowest income in each age group would receive between $470 and $4,470 less in tax credits under the House plan than they've gotten under Obamacare. All sixty-year-olds making $50,000 or less would get shorted as well.

But the more individuals make, the more likely they are to come out on the plus side. Those who are 27 and earn between $40,000 and $75,000 are slated to get a $2,000 tax credit, whereas they previously received none under Obamacare (formal name: the Affordable Care Act). Likewise, sixty-year-olds bringing home $75,000 or above who previously didn't receive a tax credit would get ones worth $1,500 to $4,000. Arguably the biggest winners, though, would be forty-year-olds making $40,000. They'd see their tax credits go up a stunning 773 percent.

The odds that the bill will pass as is, even with Republican control in both the U.S. House and the Senate, continue to fall. At this point, even Representative Paul Ryan, the biggest cheerleader for the House measure, acknowledges that "necessary improvements" must be made. The following details demonstrates why the legislation has become such a tough sell.

Michael Roberts has written for Westword since October 1990, serving stints as music editor and media columnist. He currently covers everything from breaking news and politics to sports and stories that defy categorization.